“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
— Warren Buffett
The wisdom of Warren Buffett reflects a value-based philosophy about investing that says investors are buying shares in a business, and encourages strategic thinking about investment time horizon. Before placing a buy order for a stock, a great question we can ask is whether we would still be comfortable making the investment if we couldn’t sell it for many years?
A “buy-and-hold” approach may call for a time horizon that spans a long period of time — maybe even lasting for a twenty year holding period. Suppose such a “buy-and-hold” investor had looked into buying shares of O’Reilly Automotive, Inc. (NASD: ORLY) back in 2002. Let’s take a look at how such an investment would have worked out for that buy-and-hold investor:
| Start date: | 12/16/2002 |
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| End date: | 12/15/2022 | ||||
| Start price/share: | $13.23 | ||||
| End price/share: | $807.20 | ||||
| Starting shares: | 755.86 | ||||
| Ending shares: | 755.86 | ||||
| Dividends reinvested/share: | $0.00 | ||||
| Total return: | 6,001.28% | ||||
| Average annual return: | 22.81% | ||||
| Starting investment: | $10,000.00 | ||||
| Ending investment: | $610,453.42 | ||||
As we can see, the twenty year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 22.81%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 20 years ago into $610,453.42 today (as of 12/15/2022). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 6,001.28% (something to think about: how might ORLY shares perform over the next 20 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]
Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:
“October is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.” — Mark Twain
